





?*,. 



"oo^ 













■** % - 



A° 







'V 5 *£* : 







<\ y , v * i > 



* 8 I 1 



•0' x * 






■i 



* 







A^ 

c 









*bo 



.\ 









\° ©A 












£ -nt 





















^ N 











tc * 



c o S/vV #' ^ v. 



» X "* <\ 





The Golden Darkness 



OSCAR WILLIAMS 




NEW HAVEN . YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 

LONDON • HUMPHREY MILFORD • OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 

MDCCCCXXI 







COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY 
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 



S...P 30 192 



©CLA624573 



* I 






V*r 






"5 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 

FOR permission to reprint certain poems included in this 
volume thanks are due to the editors of Poetry : A Maga- 
zine of Verse, The Nation, The Smart Set, The Midland, Con- 
temporary Verse, Everybody's Magazine, The Freeman, Lon- 
don Chapbook, Pearsons, Grinnell Review, Double Dealer, 
The Bookman, and other periodicals. 



TO 
HATTIE 



CONTENTS. 

Snow Nocturne 

A Wild Day . 

Man .... 

The Sky Is Such a Beautiful Thing 

Wonder 

Failure 

On the Train, Homeward 

Cobwebs 

There Was a Time 

Premonition . 

Clouds 

To a Friend . 

Two Pale Hands in the Night 

Mood .... 

Roofs .... 

All the While 

The Reckoning 

After I Am Dead . 

Song .... 

Trees .... 

With Me 

There Is a Sacred Wonder 

Confession 

How Many . 

Eyes .... 

The Traveler 

Forgiveness . . 

My Days Are Haunted . 

Resurrection . 

The Eternal Pity . 

Comment 

Defiance 

After .... 

But Now 

Snow Nocturne 

The Punishment 

Remembering or Forgetting 

When Will You Come . 



ll 

12 

13 
H 

16 

17 
18 

19 

20 

21 

22 

23 
24 

25 
26 

27 
28 

29 

30 
31 
32 

33 
34 
35 
36 
37 
38 

39 

40 

41 
42 

43 

44 

45 
46 

47 
48 



The Darkness 

If I Should Be Dying 

The Hand . 

Dusk in a City 

Plaint . 

The Homing Crowd at Twilight 

Warning 

On Death 

All the Things I Yearned to Say 

When Death Has Raised Me 

At a Vaudeville 

Dead Dreams 

Dreams 

In Grief 

The Demand 

Ruminations 

The Spirit's Rapture 

The Silver Prophecy 

Grey 

Plea . 

I 

Moment 

Spirit of All Things 

A Bridge Plaza in a Winter Night 



49 
5° 
5i 
52 
53 
54 
55 
56 
57 
58 

59 

60 

61 

62 

63 
64 

65 
66 

67 
68 
69 

70 

7i 

72 



10 



SNOW NOCTURNE. 

The snow is swirling down the night 
Careering like a storm at sea, 
And like a river, weird and white, 
The street is flowing silently. 

The street is flowing silently, 

And past the lamp-post's yellow eye, 

Tilting and curving before the wind 
The gold-white sails of drift blow by. 

The gold-white sails of drift blow by, 
And churning softly through the spray, 

Bound for the port of all my dreams 
A faery vessel glides away. 

A faery vessel glides away, 
And leaves a loneliness in me, 

A strangeness for those roaming dreams 
Out in the darkness on the sea. . . . 



ll 



A WILD DAY. 

Shadows that blow through the grasses 
As the shadows that move in the sea ; 
Clouds, through a wild, blue, beautiful sky, 
Rolling silently; — 

A tree like a glory in the sunlight 

With leaves that glimmer and glance ; 

And far away the poised grey mountains 
Like billows caught in a trance ; 

And a wind that roars and washes 

Like a wild flood rushing by, 
And in my heart a singing, 

And words that cry. 



12 



MAN. 

Beyond this world of circumstance 
There may be gods who know the why, 
I only know man seems afraid 
Of beauty's face beneath the sky. 

Out of the earth's warm living breast 

He finds more use for stones than flowers, 

He builds a breastwork of grim roofs 
Against the blue and silver hours. 

To hide himself from coming dawn 

And sunset's glorious retreat 
Down the horizon's rim of fire, 

He builds a trench he calls a street. 

And in the night he buys and lusts 
With youth and innocence the price, 

And all the while above him hang 
The golden stars of Paradise ! 



13 



THE SKY IS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL THING. 

The sky is such a beautiful thing 
Hanging in folds among the trees, 
I would forego the songs I sing 

And all our immortalities, 
If, far from any human face, 

For but one moment I could lie 
In such an intimate embrace 
As a great forest with the sky. 



H 



WONDER. 

Come out with me and watch a line of mountains 
Crawl like a huge blue snake across the distance ; 
Or hear a row of trees like glittering fountains 
Splash in the sun with sibilant insistence; 

Come out and see how goldenrods are burning 

Where spring brushed by and left a fire that lingers, 

Or try to touch them, all the while discerning 
How in the breeze they shy beneath your fingers ; 

And some rapt windless night come out and listen 
To the gold glimmering stars silently flowing 

Over the world, a stone in a stream where glisten 

Strange lights from skies of which there is no knowing ;- 

And through your spirit's unlit deep will blunder 
Like dusk, a hush and holiness and wonder. . . . 



15 



FAILURE. 

Whenever sundown colors go 
To where all sundowns have retreated, 
I wonder what of me has died, 

How much of me has been defeated. 

Though winds are dumb and shadows gather, 
Though nothing, nothing in me cries, 

Yet strangely I become aware of 
The tears within the twilight's eyes. 



16 



ON THE TRAIN, HOMEWARD. 

Riding in the grey dawn, in the blue dawn, 
„ When the fog is grey and blue, 
And a sharp, wild, desolate wind, 
And an ache that I never knew. 

Riding in the grey dawn, in the blue dawn 
Wrapped in silence like a cloak, 

And dark, whirling, prophetic trees 
Rising like clouds of smoke. 

Riding in the grey dawn, in the blue dawn, 

Racing with the unrisen sun, 
Over glimmering rivers of mist, 

When water and sky are one. 

Riding in the grey dawn, in the blue dawn, 
When the fog is a ghostly snow, 

Past lakes and pools that are green and dim 
Like the marshes of long ago. 

Riding in the grey dawn, in the blue dawn, 
While Fantasy is lithe like a hound, 

And darkness is bunched into huddled forests, 
And vastness moves on the ground. 

Riding in the grey dawn, in the blue dawn, 
And a thought in me that sings : 

"Time has woven a strangeness at home 
Over familiar things." 

Riding in the grey dawn, in the blue dawn, 

On, on, to keep my tryst, 
To brush away the cobweb strangeness 

As the morning will brush the mist. 

Riding in the grey dawn, in the blue dawn, 

When the fog is grey and blue, 
And a sharp, wild, desolate wind, 

And an ache that I never knew ! 

17 



COBWEBS. 

Rise in the cool dim dawn 
„ When a mist is hung on the pane, 
The loose grey cobweb of the fog 
Spun by the rain. 

When the sun's long golden fingers 
Have brushed it away, — then go 

And watch the sky through the tree-tops 
Fall like snow. 

And after, when you are tired 

And twilight hangs on the leaves, 

Listen — and the silence will tell you 
Why it grieves. 

For the fog, the sky and the twilight 
Are the cobwebs that brush the eyes 

When a man would enter the dusty door 
Of Paradise. . . . 



18 



THERE WAS A TIME. 

There was a time when I was shy and lonely, 
And stood in strange bewilderment apart, 
And no one spoke to me, and silence only 
Would fold my songs into her tender heart. 

There was a time when only windy darkness 

Would fan my dreams with glamoured loveliness, 

But you have come, — and nights are filled with starkness 
And I am lonely for my loneliness. 

Oh, you have come, — and silence is a stranger, 
And darkness keeps aloof from my distress, 

And you — O you are all too fraught with danger, 
And I am lonely for my loneliness ! 



19 



PREMONITION. 

When darkness like a sea 
Swims in among the stars, 
And I am filled with strangeness, 
With wild mysterious fears, 
I plead deep, deep in me 
With all the gods who bless 
This world with light and beauty ,- 
Or any god that hears, — 
That I may watch a while 
A dawn with gold clouds flying, 
And walk a country mile 
And see a human face, 
Before my soul goes crying 
Through the waste loneliness 
Of weird and starless space. . . . 



20 



CLOUDS. 

There is a splendor in the castled clouds 
That float like ghosts of vanished Babylons, 
When haughty silence moves above the crowds 
And sunset fills the blue with carven bronze. 

There is a grandeur in the peopled mists 
Dark with the secret shadows of the sea, 

Rolling to keep their hushed mysterious trysts 
With phantom Babylons that are to be. 

O you who crowd the streets, and laugh and cry, 

You do not realize some distant time 
Silence shall chant the epics of the sky, 

Your dream, your grief, the glitter of your prime ; 

The shadows of your towers and lights and homes 
Shall float above some unborn city's domes. 



21 



TO A FRIEND. 

I know there is a silence in your soul, 
That hangs like twilight in a holy shrine, 
The fold on fold of shadow, haunting, frail, 
Unstirred, untouched, by any word of mine; — 

A silence like the hush before the dawn, 

After earth rose against night's fearful odds, 

Like a clenched fist, knuckled with crags before 
The blue star-glittering window of the gods. 

There is a silence in you like the hush 

After earth's cry for beauty and the pain ; 

And I have heard how dreams and loneliness 

Move in the folds, like wind through folds of rain. 



22 



TWO PALE HANDS IN THE NIGHT. 

Framed in the blackness of a factory pane, 
Two pale hands moved and stitched long day on day, 
And I, who dreamed and watched across the way, 
Saw joyous beauty wander by in vain: 
The sky blundered over the roof; the dawn 
Lit to a dull smile the window's dust and stain ; 
Sunset went by, twilight and the wild grey rain ; 
And all the time the dim white hands stitched on. 

Like drowning hands they cried in that dark place ; 

Winters spread wide their snow, and springs their green. 

One day only a black, blank pane was seen, 

And they were gone, I never saw the face ; 

But where the waves had closed on that white cry 

The darkness thundered on beneath the sky. . . . 



23 



MOOD. 

A sky filling with shadow as a flower with rain . 
A wind grey with the secret moods of the sea 
And the old singing comes back again, 
And the old, aching perplexity. 

The old questioning comes back once more 
Asking the little shadows hiding in tears, 

Why love cries in the rain outside the door, 
And beauty blunders forever down the years. 



24 



ROOFS. 

Dream, O men, to reach the sky, 
Build your roofs and build them high; 
From the earth where soft grass drowses 
Take the rock to build your houses ; 
From the plains where beauty roams 
Take the shadows for your homes ; 
Build and dream to reach the sky, — 
Dreams are dear, but truth is dearer, — 
If your roofs were not so high, 
Oh, your blue sky would be nearer ! 



25 



ALL THE WHILE. 

Many have been within my dwelling-place, 
And I have merry-made in sun and rain, 
But all the while I saw, like a strange face, 
Loneliness prowling round my window-pane. 

I have laughed loudly, sung, spoken with guile, 
Danced and rioted and longed for more, 

But underneath, insistent all the while, 
I heard the silence knocking on my door. 



26 



THE RECKONING. 

IT is not that I shall never see again 
Beauty bending over the hours, 
Changing and ever-present like the sky 
Feeding the crimson flames of flowers. 

It is not that I shall never feel again 
The wild rain's dolorous downpour, 

Or wind and sun and glamour of the earth 
When spring is at the door. 

But what if after all is over and done, 

In a weird and hushed place, 
What if I should come upon the darkness 

Face to face? 



27 



AFTER I AM DEAD. 

After I am dead 
L I shall be gone from the day, 
And the wind will gather my dust in his arms 
And bear me far away. 

After I am dead 

I shall leave no sign or track, 
And the shadow that walked beside me 

Will be gathered back. 



28 



SONG. 

The wild birds sing for joy of spring, 
But unto me who dream and long, 
Pain is a stabbing melody, 
And sadness is a song. 

But grief is patient evermore, 
And I will wait for that far day, 

When happiness will come to me 
And blow my songs away. 



29 



TREES. 

The fruit of living trees is sweet 
And autumn goes and spring comes back; 
But all the fruit that dead trees bear 
Is hopeless, bitter, black. 

The living trees grow lustily, 

The ocean running through their veins ; 
The dead trees squat in smoke and dust 

And never lift their heads in rains. 

The living trees have one blue roof 
Enough for all on hill and cloud; 

The dead trees have no room in life, 
And so, black roof on roof, they crowd. 

The living trees have silver stars 
To rustle down their leafy streams ; 

The only stars the dead trees have 
Are starved and stunted dreams ! 



30 



WITH ME. 

When I was born a million stars 
Flamed out of dead eternity, 
And heaved the hills into the sky- 
As moonlight heaves the shaggy sea. 

Out of dead silence wild birds sang, 
As out of shade, emerged their grace ; 

When I was born a million flowers, 
A million trees sprang into place. 

Out of dead darkness rivers roared, 
Out of dead darkness, wind and sea, 

Out of dead darkness, dawn and spring, — 
All time and space were born with me ! 

But when I die, some monstrous hand 
Out of a night that is not night, 

Will draw a silence down the wind, 
A darkness down life's pane of light. 

And all will vanish, birds and trees, 

And dawn and spring and shaggy sea;- 

The weary hills will settle back, 
And all the stars will die with me ! 



31 



THERE IS A SACRED WONDER. 

There is a sacred wonder on the earth 
Unknown to happy birds and golden days, 
That lingers like a sad delirium 
And cries in hidden ways. 

It beats forever beneath the froth of things 
And never sunlit loveliness will wane, 

But like some shadow-agony it roams 
With streaming hair of rain. 

Over the earth the sacred wonder roams 
Robed in a greyness woven of the sea, 

And like a sadness in a woman's eyes, 
It haunts eternally. 

It wears the lonely twilight for a cloak 
And often hides its eyes, as sorrow must, 

And where its drapery swishes by 
The darkness drifts like dust. 

It mourns over wet, glistening roofs like wind, 
Then summons silence from her far hushed place, 

And I, who dream beside my shadowed pane, 
Have seen a still, grey face. . . . 



32 



CONFESSION. 

There's a sin that haunts my songs, 
There's a sin that haunts my dreams, 
As the ocean's bitterness 

Haunts the rippling lyric streams. 

Though the ocean fashions wind, 
Curves the rainbow, flaunts the rain, 

All the ocean's bitterness 
At the bottom must remain ! 



33 



HOW MANY <? 

How many stars have the skies folded away, 
Yet never a dusk will sail across the blue, 
But leaves a wake of starlight shimmering. 

How many autumns blowing like great waves 
Have drawn after them the greenery and sound, 
Yet never will earth swirl nearer to the light, 
But color lifts her head out of the rain, 
And melody rustles the wind from her wings. 

How many shadows nesting under clouds 

Have joined the surging darkness of the sea, 

Yet never will a gold day ripple in the wind, 

But the shadows are climbing back mysteriously, 

And never a strange stirring in the twilight of all tears, 

But a shadow looks out of some woman's eyes. 

Blue skies silently closing in on pale stars . . . 

Autumns lost beneath a vast hush of snow . . . 

And shadows dumb — dumb throughout all the years . . . 

This is the silence speaking, voicing 

Beauty that lives forever and forever dies. 



34 



EYES. 

There have been eyes remembered of the rain 
Rustling the starlight from her blowing hair, 
And eyes in the wake of the ocean's dusk 
That left her secret shadows smouldering there. 

There have been eyes remembered of the wind 
Waking in tears the blue dew-light anew, 
And eyes that soul-wraiths in the waiting darkness, 
Eager with strange stirring, wondered through. 

There have been eyes like dim, unopened panels 
Behind which listening soul-wraiths heard all in vain, 
The cry of the years blundering through beauty, 
The cry of the wind desolate in the rain. 

There have been eyes that the weird star-rays 

Like elfin fingers, opened on a vast blue sea, 

Where ocean-girdled worlds swim, and grandeured hills 

Grasp dumbly at nothingness eternally. 

Always there have been eyes innumerable, 

But never will they close on tired white faces, 

But worlds and worlds of stars and rains and dawns 

Plunge blindly weltering through unknown spaces. 



35 



THE TRAVELER. 

I shall come back with memories 
Of opal seas and sapphire skies, 
A thousand winds upon my lips, 
A thousand strangers in my eyes. 

I shall come back with fragrant tales 
Of glamour in an alien land, 

Where shadow-fingered twilights sift 
The golden stars, like grains of sand. 

I shall come back with memories 

Whose shadows on my face will fall ; 

Pray God they do not strangely tell 
That I have not come back at all. 

I shall come back with fragrant tales, 
That will say much but not the whole ; 

I shall say all, if I come back 
With silence in my soul. 



36 



FORGIVENESS. 

I have sinned so long in fevered darkness, 
So long have I sinned wilfully, 
And stolen what life would have given for the asking, 
And spilled the holy vintage of the sea. 

I have sinned so often in fevered darkness, 

And yet I cannot walk out in the morning but I meet 

The cool, the tender winds running to me 

From where a wild gladness waits in the street. 

A familiar strangeness is in people's faces, 
My eyes burn, for a moment I am blind, 
And a sad wild singing wells up in me, — 

soothing wonder of earth, why are you kind *? 

1 have wronged you so often, so long have I wronged you, 
I would be glad if you brought me agony now, 

But what can I say to you, O soothing wonder of earth, 
When you kiss me so tenderly on the brow 1 ? 



37 



MY DAYS ARE HAUNTED. 

MY days are haunted by delirium, 
A weirdness, wild and beautiful and sad, 
A strange madness that keeps my reason firm, 
And strange reason that makes the whole world mad. 

There is a secret music in my veins 
More hidden in my being than dew-fire 
In the dim folds of the rain's drapery, 
And deeper rooted than unborn desire. 

There is a listening hush in me that hears 

A blown harmony breaking into words, 

When night's dark fingers strike the lyre of heaven, 

And the stars tremble like golden chords. 

There is loneliness that haunts the dusk 
And loiters where the vague stone mountains stand 
Watching the sky and keeping count of time 
By falling worlds like golden grains of sand. 

My days are haunted by delirium, 

A weirdness, wild and beautiful and sad, 

A strange madness that keeps my reason firm, 

And strange reason that makes the whole world mad. 



38 



RESURRECTION. 

All night I sinned, and all the daytime 
ii I brooded through in agony, 
My soul was filled with hitter crying 

Not so much for what died of me, 
As for the life that still persisted, 

The wronged and plundered life struck dumb, 
Robbed of its dream, its bit of beauty, 

Its singing that would never come. 

Throughout the mournful hours I brooded, 

Nothing, nothing seemed left to me, 
But in the grey, the early twilight 

I left my room of agony. 
And on the street soft winds were blowing, 

Beauty assailed me, wild and strange, 
Faces and footfalls and warm kind laughter. . . 

Over my aching came a change ; 

I felt like one who from a mouldy 

Cold grave has risen up again, 
And wanders down a street at sunset, 

Seeing, once more, the world of men, 
The trees, the roofs, the sky of colors, 

And wondering, his senses freed, 
If this could be the world he died in, 

If this could be his world indeed ! 



39 



THE ETERNAL PITY. 

When I walk among the gravestones men call houses, 
In the cemetery men call a city, 
And feel the cold wind that noses at all windows, 
I am swept by the old eternal pity. 

All the old confusion blows over me, 

Sadness, beauty, loneliness, wave on wave ; 

I walk through the grey streets, I have nowhere to go, 

I cannot walk anywhere but over my grave. 

In every house I see a tense, dumb appeal 
Of the many dead who do not want to die ; 
All the roofs are the lifted hands of the dust 
Beseeching the blue aloofness of the sky. 

I speak to a man, I speak to a dead man . . . 
I have nowhere to go, I walk through the grey streets ; 
A chill gravestone is waiting for me somewhere; 
The years are beating in people's footbeats. 

When I walk among the gravestones men call houses, 
In the cemetery men call a city, 
And feel the cold wind that noses at all windows, 
I am swept by the old eternal pity. 



40 



COMMENT. 

IF all this world is nothing but a stage 
Then all is sham indeed ; but man forgets, 
Remembering his rival in the dark, 
And time forgets, remembering that, too, 
And there is more than shamming in their thrusts. 

Out of the dark the eyes of myriads watch, 
Wondering, perhaps, that life could be so real, 
Until the climax comes, a cry, a gasp ; 
Then down the silence of the dark is heard 
The wild and thunderous applause of seas. 



41 



DEFIANCE. 

When black specks dart before my burning eyes, 
And I have fear sometime I shall not see 
How beauty haunts the earth, I am aware 
The primal blindness of rock is claiming me. 

When glamoured dreams go out in me like lights 

And I have fear that now forevermore 
Earth's wonder will be lost, I am aware 

The sombre darkness waits outside my door. 

And yet, O fears of body and of soul, 

You cannot chill me, I would have you know, 

Though blindness claims me and though darkness waits, 
Oh, they shall hear me sing before I go ! 



42 



AFTER. 

A fter the urge of beauty through a few warm pulses, 
jfjL A day will come, if it but be a day, 
When clouds will slip bodily into the ocean, 

And the blue sky will steal softly away. 

After the cry of beauty borne by a few voices, 

A night will come, if but a night it be, 
When waves, like veins, will lose their restless beating, 

And stars, like lights, will go out suddenly. 

After beauty has swirled away into darkness, 
Joys will never meet again, nor sorrows part, 

Only silence will roam over the nothingness 

Like the vast cry of a mighty, broken heart. . . . 



43 



BUT NOW. 

I shall not be I when the sky shall fall in folds 
Among as yet unrisen grandeured hills ; 
When the ocean shall have gathered in ungathered sorrows, 
Drawing in his wide net of rivers and rills. 

I shall not be I when the starlight shall have swept away 
Mighty waves of greenery unpulsing as yet, 
When darkness shall be a kind face, silence a soft voice, 
And souls shall remember and never care to forget. 

I shall not be I when the loneliness of loneliness 

Shall have stolen back to dead space never to come again, 

And beauty shall rise, as it has never yet, out of dawns and 

rains, 
And all the strange stirrings in the hearts of men. 

But now that I am I, with the expectant eyes of the dead 
In the thronged and waiting darkness looking at me, 
With so much beauty wiser and so much love greater, 
And just so many more shadows venturing from the sea; — 

Now that I am I, never, never to be so again, 
Now that I am at the height and the glory of a self, 
I must ache and despair and work and aspire 
For a little dust on a shelf! 



44 



SNOW NOCTURNE. 

Black branches against the freezing night 
Silverly blue and strangely fair ; 
Silently blowing in the starlight — 
God's tossed hair. 

Fields white with snowlight curving the sky ; 

Silent, upturned, gazing on space, 
Brushed by the silver wind of the aeons — 

God's dead face. 



45 



THE PUNISHMENT. 

What wrong have I done in the dark dead years 
To deserve this attic five stories high, 
With this low black door and this little window 
That frames nothing but the sky? 

What have I done in the dark dead years *? 

What nameless sin that can never rest 
Bids mother earth to hold me so high 

Away from her warm living breast *? 

Oh, what have I done in the dark dead years 
That dead trees acquiesce and make my door, 

That earth puts four fingers together and says : 
"So much sky is yours. No more" ? 



4 6 



REMEMBERING OR FORGETTING. 

Remembering or forgetting, spring on spring, 
_ How starlight beats forever down the rain, 
And how, like tide on tide, when autumns wane, 
Flowers fold away the sundown's coloring, — 

Still do I toss on this sea vastly agleam 
With starlight and with sunlight, wave on wave, 
Folding weird silver years across my grave, 
And deep surges of silence over my dream. 

Remembering or forgetting, year on year, 
How twilights flee like waves across the sky, 
Still do I voice all silence in a cry, 
All darkness in the glimmer of a tear, 

Till a wind will part the dusk of the sea, 

And the weird starlight will close in on me. . . . 



47 



WHEN WILL YOU COME? 

On the dark hushed shore of sleep 
I hear the sound of a star-surging sea; 

you who sail the blue heaving deep, 
When will you come for me*? 

1 sing far in the inland by day, 

But in the night, on that sombre shore 
I see dim ships silently dip away 
Into the darkness forevermore. 

Under a heavy hush I hear muffled wails, 

But when will you come over the waves of stars 

With the last rain and snow and wind blowing like sails 
From your strange and luminous spars'? 

Each night I crawl to the shore of sleep 

And scan the horizon of that weird sea; 
O you who sail the blue heaving deep, 

When will you come for me *? 



4 8 



THE DARKNESS. 

I have seen eyeless shadows at the pane 
At twilight when the wind was strange and low; 
I have heard innumerable feet go by 
At twilight when the rain was dim and wild ; 
I have felt the silence of the night thud and thud 
On through my veins, and I know that somewhere, 
Looking for me, the darkness tears the winds, 
Huge, blind and blundering beneath the stars. 



49 



IF I SHOULD BE DYING. 

IF I should be dying when I am young, 
Do not console me, give me instead, 
My own heart's bitter breaking until the end, 
Give me life's agony till I am dead. 

If I should be dying when I am young, 
When spring is aching and wild and dear, 

Do not console me with a world to come, 

Give me the madness of a world that is here ! 

Let me go mad in the sunlight on green grass, 
In wind pungent with the wraith of a wave, 

Let music tear my sick heart with delirium, 
Let a beautiful face call to me over the grave ! 



50 



THE HAND. 

With my fist I shattered 
The blue pane of night, 
And the stars vanished 
In a crash of light. 

And a huge darkness 

Leaped full in my face; — 
A silence whirled me 

Away into space. 

My songs were murdered, 
My dreams were dead, 

But far in some darkness 
My living hand bled ! 



51 



DUSK IN A CITY. 

The sifting shadows lift and fall 
Among the lamp-posts' yellow gleams ; 
The frail wind wafts the twilight down — 
The gossamer grey dust of dreams. 

Against my pane the shadows swirl, 

While strange and huge, a hush drifts by, 

And leaves a vastness in my room, 
A crying urge to wind and sky. 

And I must dream of how the dusk, 
Beyond the walls around my walls, 

Must curl a flower to send the moon 
Cascading down far waterfalls. 

And I must dream of how the wind, 
Beyond the bars around my bars, 

Awakens elfin melodies 

Upon the silver strings of stars ! 



52 



PLAINT. 

IF He can light the white flame of a lily, 
And send down children's cheeks the tears, 
If He can heap the sky among the hills 

And launch the sea upon the years, 
How can He let me sin in fevered darkness ^ 

How can He let me be untrue 
To stars, to flowers, to buried centuries, 
And most of all, to you ? 

How can He let me ache beside my window, 

Knowing how dusk waits patiently 
To gather me away in wide, blue arms 

Beyond the wind and sea*? 
With flowers and stars so sterile in my spirit, 

With dusk so patient on my pane, 
How can He let me dream beside my window 

And wait for you in vain*? 



53 



THE HOMING CROWD AT TWILIGHT. 

Dreamingly I wander through the crowd, 
On either side of me people rush by, 
A rain of faces, changing, swirling, 
Pouring toward me out of what sky *? 

A fluttering, lonely rain of faces, 

Hurrying, hurrying home to rest, 
Pouring toward me and lost in my dreaming 

Like drops in the mother earth's breast. 

My dreams stir strangely — is this the way 
The mother earth feels in a shower? 

O rushing rain of faces, out of you 
My loneliness grows like a flower ! 



54 



WARNING. 

So time goes by ... a night of swooning sin, 
And then a day of bitterness and song, 
Then night again ; and yet the world I wrong 
Knows not the struggle raging on within. 

O he who kills the flesh murders the soul, 

But life is kind here in this world of men ; 

Beauty forgives me again and again, 

And winds and rains and dawns come to console. 

So time went by until one dreary day 
After a night of the old fevered madness, 
Waking to bitter song, and the bleak sadness 
Of a cold wind and sky, I was struck dumb 

To see above the horizon's rim of grey 
The startled eyes of the Millennium ! 



55 



ON DEATH. 

The face of Death is life ; all love, all change, 
All beauty are the lineaments of his face; 
His eyes are soft and beautiful and strange, 
They watch me all the time in every place. 

His breath is silence and darkness his hair ; 

His hidden heart and hands no living men 

Have seen through time's thin veil hung everywhere, 

Or known just why they plan there, how ... or when. 

Often at night in bitter pillowed ease 
I hear in the heartbeats beneath my breath 
Down dim red halls of all hushed centuries 
The muffled footfalls of approaching Death; 

For he is kind and beautiful and wise, 

Death is his own death for the brain that dies. 



56 



ALL THE THINGS I YEARNED TO SAY. 

All the things I yearned to say, 
l All the things I never said, — 
Oh, are they unrecorded as 
The movements of the waves? 
Oh, will they vanish — vanish as 
The trails of ships at sea? 

I know not, but they sometimes come 
Like little ghosts of things unborn, 
And flutter, furtive, through my dreams, 
And haunt the dusk with wistfulness, 
And sometimes through the things I say 
They pulse and pulse, as silent as 
The ocean's heartbeats coursing through 
The veins of singing leaves. 



51 



WHEN DEATH HAS RAISED ME. 

When Death has raised me through a cloud he rifted 
Earth will rush in my body's place from all about, 
As water rushes in when some great stone is lifted, 
As darkness rushes in when some bright light goes out. 

My dreams of love, my hopes and fears the while I sought her, 
The things I gave and took when life was ripe with bloom, 

Will find expression like curled ripples on the water, 
Like memories of dead light dying in the gloom. 



58 



AT A VAUDEVILLE. 

The stage was dark, but in one corner flared 
A spotlight's moon of gold ; into it came 
A spirit clothed in stars and dark blue flame, 
That deeper glowed than night had ever dared; 

The moon fares in the sky, but here there fared 
A bit of sky that sang within the moon, 
Of hearts that break in spring and know not June, 

Or hearts that ache with tenderness unshared, — 

Sang till her own heart, broken, winged with song, 

Floated above dark heads and to them told — 
These silent lives of tragedy and wrong — 

How lips may quiver though the sky be blue, 

How eyes may blur with tears though moons be gold, 
How hearts among the stars are broken, too ! 



59 



DEAD DREAMS. 

When you come back, as spring comes back to earth, 
For just a little while some autumn day, 
I know that you will search that flaming way 
Where once you scattered color, music, mirth, 

Again to ask the meadows to be kind, 

The tingling sap to flow, the woods to ring, 
The gold and green to glow, the birds to sing, — 

And not a thing will answer but the wind. . . . 

Only the wind, arms full of shrivelled leaves, 
Will run to you, and offer them instead, 
But you will turn away, now they are dead, 

Now it is over and my whole earth grieves, 

And I shall see my dead dreams in your eyes 
Die once again, slain by your hurt surprise ! 



60 



DREAMS. 

Youth gave me singing dreams, 
The wealth of sun and day, 
But Life came like a robber 
And stole my dreams away. 

Age gave me quiet dreams, 

The wealth of twilight skies, 
But Life has come like a beggar 

With piteous, pleading eyes. 

Oh, I could close my heart 

Though my dreams were stolen by day, 
But how can I console myself 

For dreams I gave away? 



6l 



IN GRIEF. 

You say that spring has come again 
With singing fire in her veins, 
That life is throbbing everywhere 
In flower-kissing winds and rains. 

But oh, why will you taunt me so 

With all these shining words you say*? 

My spirit now is deaf and blind, 

And springtime was not made for clay. 

It matters not in all this world 

Where stricken, groping souls abound 

Unto the blind how bright the light, 
Unto the deaf how sweet the sound. 



62 



THE DEMAND. 

Unto the door of my heart you came 
To wait, a quiet, little thing, 
Your silent lips afraid to name 

Your yearning eyes' dumb questioning. 

You never asked the reason why 

I kept you waiting, I, who knew, — 

And all the while the years went by 
Gazing at me, but touching you. 

And Death has come to close that door, 
To keep his strange unworded vow, 

And you, who feared to speak before, 
Demand an answer now ! 



63 



RUMINATIONS. 

"Qo," I said, "I am feeling 
k3 What I shall always feel — 

The sharp toe of a stone, 
And a shadow's heel." 

"So," I said, "I am seeing 
What I shall always see — 

The snow blossoms of moonlight 
Blowing on a tree." 

"So," I said, "I am hearing 
What I shall always hear — 

The winds with hair of starlight 
Crying wild and clear." 

"So," I said, "I glory in 

What shall always be mine — 

The flowers flushing red 
In the sky's blue wine." 

"So," I said, "I am living 

What I may not be — 
A dusty masterpiece, 

A mouldy biography." 



6 4 



THE SPIRIT'S RAPTURE. 

I have heard through the streets, when the dusk 
Was gaunt and grey with pain, 
Like a crying soul whose voice is spent 
The moving lips of the rain. 

I have looked into the castles of lights, 

Under the roar and the flare, 
The glittering darkness of a city night 

With golden snakes in her hair. 

I have felt in the desolate midnight 

A huge Thing glaring at me, 
W T hen rainy pavements like the teeth of darkness 

Were gleaming savagely. 

I think I shall burn all my dreams, 

And all that is mine among men ; 
I shall choose a road drifted with moonlight 

When the wind is low, and then, — 

I shall sing a song of madness 

Till the body's song is done, 
And send my spirit's rapture surging 

Through the music of oblivion. 



65 



THE SILVER PROPHECY. 

When the great loneliness steals on me like shadow 
And the whirl of cities is a dream that is lost ; 
I shall not light a fire, nor at the window 
Watch the golden starlight of the frost. 

I shall wander through the deep, frozen dusk 
Like a shadow through a mirror's intricacies ; 

I shall gaze on the porcelain leaves of rime, 
The silver rime glimmering on the trees. 

The wind will be full of silver needles, 

The wind will be a keen and glittering rain, 

I shall wander through the deep, frozen dusk 
And my face shall glow with the stars of pain. 

And there will come a crying in me, 

And the whole grey world will peal and cry ; 

I know that the heavens will swing above, 
And silver hoarfrost bells sweep by. 

The dusk will be hung with the silver mists 

Of a mute oblivion, and I shall go 
Far where dark silence calls on great white hills 

Over the blue wastes of silver snow. . . . 



66 



GREY. 

A bleak wind is riding on the waves, 
And the shadowy foam is hurled ; 
And the grey rains are on the hills 
And a grey dusk is over the world. 

And bleak moods and shadowy moods 
Move like the moods of the sea, 

And mist, like a grey unspoken thought, 
Is looking strangely at me. 

And I am lost in greyness, 

My dreams are still and furled, 

For the grey rains are on the hills 
And a grey dusk is over the world. 



6 7 



PLEA. 

Grant me one little thing, 
Gods of the gloom in the wood- 
When I pass the last, lit window 

Of the living brotherhood, 
When I hear in the throat of twilight 

The last, last cry of a frog, 
Let me not come in some wild place 
On the dead, white face of the fog. 



68 



I. 

When the snow steals through the forest like moonlight, 
And the wind is filled with a silvery drift 
Like moonlight crushed to a keen, fine powder 

That the trees' black fingers are trying to sift, 
When the frost burns bright in the living eyes, 

And the world is beautiful and hushed and white, 
I shall leave my roof, and crawl back, a dark 
Unholy thought through the silvery night. 



6 9 



MOMENT. 

When the hills pull the fog over their shoulders, 
And the sky is a white, dead face, 
A hush, like the final silence 

Steals out of ultimate space, 

And holds the whole rapt world 

For one grand moment above 

All time and tears and laughter 

All loneliness and love. . . . 



70 



SPIRIT OF ALL THINGS. 

The faces on the avenue 
Are living words that flit, 
And some are keen, and some are harsh 

And some are exquisite ; 
And there are wistful words, like dusk, 

And words as glad as day, — 
And yet I feel the simple thing 
You find so hard to say. 

O you whose great heart is the earth, 

With clouds that move like fears, 
With hills' grey parted lips that chant 

The silence through the years, — 
How can you let these faces flit? 

How can you let it be, 
And use so many words to speak 

Your heart's simplicity ? 



71 



A BRIDGE PLAZA IN A WINTER NIGHT. 
I. 

The bridge plaza is hung with moons, 
Fringed with a broidery of stars, 

Soft and pearly through the veil of a frail snowfall ; 

Over the pavements of stone, stretch the pavements of snow, 

Out of the strange orange twilight with its roof of curving 
darkness. 

Trolley cars, with frost-misted windows, glide over the frozen 
glistering rails, 

Softly, silently, 

As though they knew that the light that they carry within them 

Is the booty robbed from the tombs of dead volcanoes. 

Like a bell swung against a carpet, 

So a muffled clanging beats briefly against the snowflake-woven 
air, 

As a yellow front-light 

Noses along the alabaster ground. 

On the black, gaunt branches of a tree at a sidewalk's edge, 

A gold-white cloth is lying, 

And underneath it a lamp-post glares 

Like the eye of the serpent guarding the Golden Fleece. 

Out of the darkness curving overhead 

The snowflakes drift into the faery light of the plaza, 

And through the little noises of the city night 

The silence sifts and sifts. . . . 

Far, far away, the faint whistle of a boat, as though from mys- 
tical lips, 

Is calling away the enchantment that has settled on the plaza ; 

Far, far away, over the tops of the houses 

The elevated trains like golden snakes are crawling; 

Far, far away, the black steel limbs of the bridge 

Shoulder the night. 

II. 

The bridge plaza is hung with moons, 

Fringed with a broidery of stars, 

Mellow and golden through the veil of a frail snowfall ; 

But through this faery orange twilight, ghosts are hurrying : 

72 



People are coming home from work with their hands in their 

coat pockets ; 
People are coming home from work with huddled shoulders ; 
People are coming home from work with a weariness in their 

eyes. 
The crunch of a footstep is heard, 
And the muffled thud of hoofs striking sparks of frost, 
And a child sobbing softly through the snow. . . . 
O city ! 

There is cotton in the mouth of the city ; 
Unseen hands grip the throat of the city; 
The city is struggling silently. 

III. 

The bridge plaza is hung with moons, 

Fringed with a broidery of stars, 

Strange and shimmering through the veil of a frail snowfall ; 

Hemming in from three sides, golden stores are shining 

With their doors of glamour and their windows of dream. 

Out of the darkness curving overhead, 

Out of the prison of infinity, 

Under the covers of snowflakes, 

Tiny shadows are escaping, — 

Tiny, unthought-of, unseen shadows 

Sail into the luminous land of the plaza. 

They whirl, they line up, they march in ranks, 

They hide under their little white shields, 

And steadily, steadily they are raising a bulwark of alabaster 

against the night. 
The crunch of a footstep is heard — 
Is this the way shadows groan 1 ? 
Or is the crunch of that footstep in the snow 
The crunch of life eating death ? 

The thud of hoofs shooting clouds of drift is heard — 
Is it the gaunt mother earth beating her breasts in dishevelled 

despair ? 
A child is sobbing softly through the snow — 
Is life but a child crying in a realm of dream and glamour ? 
O city ! 

73 



The eyes of the city blaze with cold fire ; 

The city is breathing hard ; 

All the windows are misty with the breath of the city ; 

The lungs of the city are filled with winter winds. 

But the city is triumphant ; 

He has already forgotten the unseen hands of the darkness; 

He is sprawling at ease on his couch of snow, 

He stretches his legs through the streets ; 

He chuckles silently. 

He is crowned with a laurel of beauty, 

He wears a wreath of dream and glamour around his head, 

A string of moons and stars is curled around and around his 

head. 
But beware, O city, beware ! 

Though your flesh is of stone and your veins are of steel, 
Your wreath will be your hanging rope ; 
Beauty will be the death of you, Beauty is cruel ; 
She never had mercy for any one, 
She will never show mercy to you. 
Beware, O Nero in stone and steel ! 
Beware, O city, beware ! 



IV. 

The bridge plaza is hung with moons, 

Fringed with a broidery of stars, 

Luminous with glamour through the veil of a frail snowfall, 

And the stretches of white are touched with the gold of wonder. 

A trolley car glides by on cotton wheels, 

Moving like a nightmare with a yellow eye, 

Moving like a nightmare entering a dream. 

The snowflakes drift and drift into the orange twilight of the 

plaza ; 
Each delicately flimmering string is the fluttering pulse of a 

hush; 
Each elfin glimmer the quaint twinkle in the eyes of the frost. 
Ah, eyes ! 
The city's conscience is a peacock's tail ; 

74 



The city is full of eyes, 

The city is nothing but eyes. 

There are the bleary eyes of distant houses looking out 

Under their ermine hoods ; 

There are the glittering eyes of lamp-posts, remembering their 

Niagara, 
Wondering, perhaps, whether these wavering flake-strings 
Are their cataract's white dishevelled hair only grown older; 
There are the black eyes of the tall factories beyond the houses ; 
There are the roaming eyes of autos and trucks and horses and 

wagons, 
And there are the eyes of people with a weariness in them. 
But the eyes of Silence, as she moves among the moons of the 

plaza, are the eyes of many : 
Silence is a sphinx of nothingness with blind eyes fixed on 

infinity ; 
Silence is a weird woman whose eyes are caverns of night and 

vastness ; 
Silence is an Amazon with breast-plates of glittering frost; 
Silence is a mystical Helen for whom, far, far beyond the rim 

of daylight, spectral towers are crashing; — 
And Silence is a child sobbing softly through the snow. . . . 
Though her heart is heavy, heavy, 

She moves lightly among the moons and the stars of the plaza, 
With a tread that is softer than the tread of star-feet fleeting 

over the silver wastes of the clouds. 
Sometimes she turns unseen, and a crystalline shimmer of her 

drapery whisks away into darkness ; 
Sometimes little winds with feet of drift run after her and hold 

on to her unseen hem ; 
Sometimes she touches the staring eyes of a factory and they 

close ; 
Sometimes she stops and listens, tautly poised on the edge of 

the world. 
And so the snowflakes sift and sift into the orange twilight of 

the plaza; 
And far, far away, the faint whistle of a boat, as though from 

mystical lips, 
Is calling away the enchantment that has settled on the plaza ; 

75 



And far, far away, over the tops of the houses, 
The elevated trains like golden snakes are crawling; 
And far, far away, the black steel limbs of the bridge 
Shoulder the night. 



7 6 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



$r 











y 



V I B 



p. 








• 
















*p. 










<* 

* 






: ? -^ 











.V 





V 




T V, 






^ * -0 N 



/ -*#^ % ^ /111: W 4 








IggF N. MANCHESTER 
~T___JND(ANA ' 



: ^> j 






A 






4 -^ 



v^ 



>%. 



S s. 






